Top 10 Funny News in the Crypto World 2024 | Annual Review
Congratulations on the significant improvement of your cognitive dimension this year, completing the transformation from a crypto novice to a crypto consumer.Author: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
Happy New Year! How do you plan to spend the last moments of 2024?
If you need some NetEase Cloud moments tonight, it might look something like this:
In April, you encountered a rare rainstorm in the deserts of Dubai;
In September, the A-shares broke through 3300 points, and you hurried to cash out and buy A-shares;
In November, you were afraid of being robbed during Ethereum Devcon in Thailand, so you covered the logo on your T-shirt with white tape;
In December, Bitcoin broke through 100,000 USD, and the news you shared attracted likes from friends and family, saying you must have made a fortune by entering early, and you choked back tears as you replied: Not much, just a small profit.
…
This year, your cognitive dimension has greatly improved, completing the transformation from a crypto novice to a crypto consumer.
Here’s a summary of your investment sentiments for 2024:
Year after year, the flowers are similar, and I really want to break even in the crypto world.
On this special occasion, ChainCatcher has compiled some events that highlight the festive atmosphere beyond "financial consumption"------
(This article only represents the author's personal sense of humor. If there are darker, more humorous, or satirical news items, feel free to discuss them with us on X platform and @ChainCatcher_)
Vitalik Becomes the Foster Father of Internet Celebrity Hippo Moo Deng
In September this year, a two-month-old pygmy hippo named Moo Deng (Jumping Pig) at a zoo in Chonburi, Thailand, quickly became famous due to its playful interactions with its keepers, turning into a well-known internet meme with various meme images created. The hippo craze also swept through the crypto circle, leading to the birth of several memecoins named after it, including on Ethereum and Solana.
Interestingly, after receiving the MOODENG airdrop from the deployer, Vitalik sold off the tokens for several days, causing MOODENG to drop over 70% from its peak. However, in November, Vitalik visited the zoo to see little hippo Moo Deng, which led to the Ethereum chain's meme token MOODENG hitting an all-time high.
Recently, Vitalik announced that he has become Moo Deng's foster father, and over the next two years, he will donate 10 million Thai Baht to help the little hippo grow up healthy and happy, and "maybe even donate more because I have reserved 88 ETH for Moo Deng and her friends." Following this news, MOODENG surged nearly 70% in 24 hours.
But to be fair, Vitalik received a total of 61.7 billion MOODENG tokens, accounting for 14.68% of the total supply, worth several million dollars.
Solana Officially Releases Breakpoint Advertisement, Satirizing the Current State of Crypto Conferences
On August 1, Solana's official social media released a promotional video titled "Breakpoint: not your average crypto conference." This video satirizes the current state of crypto summits, hitting hard and cutting deep. For example, there are more speakers than attendees, participants collect "a ton" of project merchandise, listeners care more about airdrops and token issuance than project innovation, guests often repeat similar viewpoints and force concepts, and discussions are often nonsensical. This video was quickly translated into multiple languages, sparking discussions (or self-mockery) within the industry, and has garnered over 1 million views. Interestingly, Solana's Breakpoint indeed lived up to its words, as the Breakpoint summit held in September received high popularity and acclaim.
Revisit: https://x.com/solana/status/1818718599579943075
On November 5, Solana also released a video titled "Build for users. not VCs," seemingly calling back to the satirical advertisement from August. This latest video lists a series of crypto industry jargon, such as discussing building infrastructure, improving scalability, bridging to mainnet, re-staking, establishing partnerships with well-known protocols, and quickly securing funding, but never inquiring about consumers, users, or specific use cases.
Click here to view: https://x.com/solana/status/1853567281630150859
Bankless Founder and Synthetix Founder Engage in an Offline Real-Life Fight
There are many online users in the crypto space who challenge each other, but few dare to actually fight. On October 11, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick and Bankless founder David Hoffman engaged in an offline real-life fight in Salt Lake City, Utah.
This match was co-hosted by Permissionless and the fighting live-streaming platform Karate Combat. Permissionless is a cryptocurrency-themed conference co-hosted by Bankless and Blockworks, which offered free tickets to the fighting event to users holding tickets.
The reason for their fight stemmed from some disagreements during an online discussion about core issues in DeFi and the crypto industry. The two had previously reached a $500,000 betting agreement regarding the sponsorship scale of Synthetix's infinex. This crypto fight attracted significant attention, with Polymarket opening a betting pool on their duel as early as September 24.
The real-life fight lasted less than ten minutes, with the final result being Bankless founder David beating Synthetix founder Kain, who was significantly larger than him.
Related: 《Crypto Real-Life Fight, Bankless Founder Beats Synthetix Founder》
A Spa in New York Chooses to Mine Bitcoin to Heat Its Baths Due to High Electricity Costs
On the surface, Bathhouse, located in Brooklyn, New York, appears to be an ordinary public bathhouse. However, behind these warm baths are dozens of Bitcoin mining machines running 24/7.
In 2019, two young men who enjoyed soaking in baths after workouts established the first Bathhouse in Brooklyn, featuring three hot spring pools, two saunas, a steam room, and two Turkish baths. However, the constant temperature environment meant massive energy consumption, with monthly electricity bills reaching up to $20,000. In 2021, after seeing videos online about using Bitcoin mining machines to heat pools, they decided this was the most meaningful thing in the world and decided to put it into practice. By the end of 2021, they purchased 12 Bitcoin mining machines to power the two warm pools at the Williamsburg branch of Bathhouse, with these machines generating about 1,200 THz of computing power per second. This year, the Bathhouse branch in New York City's Flatiron District opened, with all four hot spring pools and three Turkish baths heated by 14 larger and better Bitcoin miners at a rate of 2,600 THz per second.
Although the income from Bitcoin mining does offset some costs, the two founders stated that they view mining merely as an engineering solution to effectively utilize energy and capital. Compared to the profits from Bitcoin mining itself, this concept and marketing approach have actually increased their visibility.
Thus, Bathhouse has never sold any Bitcoin and emphasizes that there are no plans to sell in the future. They will store the mined Bitcoin or the Bitcoin paid by customers in the company's long-term savings.
After Bitcoin Surpasses 100,000, Financial Times Issues an Apology
On December 5, Bitcoin first broke through the 100,000 USD mark, and shortly after, the Financial Times published a letter of apology with a meme as the cover titled "Hodlers: an apology: A mea culpa to mark a BTC milestone." In this article, the Financial Times wrote: "Long-time readers of FT Alphaville may have formed the impression that the authors have been skeptical of cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, both in the past and present. This is correct…"
Nevertheless, as Bitcoin's price surpassed 100,000 USD, given our long-standing cynicism, many commentators seemed to think they should apologize, so here it is: If at any point in the past 14 years you chose not to buy this continuously rising asset based on our "evaluation," we sincerely apologize. It's great when your portfolio is up. If you misunderstood our crypto cynicism as a declaration of support for tradfi, we apologize for that too, as we hate that as well.
Many in the crypto community likely began "venting" by sharing the title, but in reality, this piece is more of a self-mocking or sarcastic "apology," a very typical British-style "dark humor."
Related: 《Behind the Sarcastic "Apology" is a Cry from News Practitioners》
Airdrop Competition Escalates, LayerZero Executes "Insulting" Airdrop
The cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero officially issued an airdrop worth over 100 million USD in June this year. Prior to this, LayerZero underwent a month-long witch hunt, believing that the highest quality users should receive airdrop rewards, and these top users should be the most "persistent" ones.
LayerZero has been dubbed the "witch killer" because it introduced a brand-new "bounty reporting mechanism," which even divided the review process into self-reporting, official review, and bounty reporting stages, making it a "multi-angle, all-around" anti-witch initiative. The large-scale cleansing movement attracted a lot of criticism from "hair-pulling" participants------"2.16 million witch addresses, the largest witch pool in history has been born, hair-pulling is electronic begging, holding a bowl to ask for alms, zkSync passed by without even looking." But more were self-mocking, "the military book has twelve volumes, each volume has a grandfather's name," with many addresses innocently caught in the crossfire, having interacted honestly and spent real money but receiving nothing, leading to the emergence of a new term in the Chinese community: insulting airdrop.
Interestingly, during the airdrop claiming process, LayerZero also invented an airdrop "donation mechanism" (Proof-of-Donation), which simply means "pay to receive airdrop," requiring a donation of $0.10 for each ZRO token. This donation mechanism can actually be seen as a kind of "airdrop tax."
Related: 《Pay to Receive ZRO, This Airdrop Has Created a New Twist on Pay to Earn》
Musk Gets His Wish, Finally Becomes the Minister of D.O.G.E
In this election year in the United States, Musk has become particularly active in politics. As early as August, Musk mentioned wanting to establish a government efficiency committee during an online conversation with Trump, stating, "I think we need a government efficiency committee to examine where it makes sense to spend money and where it doesn't."
Ultimately, this government department was officially named the "Department of Government Efficiency," and its abbreviation is D.O.G.E, thanks to the special contribution of the DOGE community!
On November 12, Trump officially announced that Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would lead the Department of Government Efficiency, making "D.O.G.E" a reality, and Musk completed his transformation from "Dog King" to "D.O.G.E Minister."
However, it should be noted that although D.O.G.E and Musk's related Dogecoin $DOGE only differ by a few separators, there is no direct conceptual connection between them.
Sun Yuchen Eats the "Most Expensive Banana in History" Worth 6.2 Million USD
On November 21, Sun Yuchen purchased Maurizio Cattelan's iconic work Comedian banana for 6.2 million USD, making it the "most expensive banana in history."
On November 29, Sun Yuchen held a press conference at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong titled "Sun Yuchen Wins the World's Most Expensive Banana: Redefining the Boundaries of Art and Crypto Culture." At the press conference, Sun Yuchen ate the banana he auctioned for 6.2 million USD, stating: "The banana, as a concept of decentralization, transcends borders and boundaries." He also revealed in an interview that he made the decision to eat the banana right after successfully bidding for it, wanting to become a part of the banana's history.
According to reports, the banana was purchased by a Sotheby's staff member from a fruit stand in Manhattan's Upper East Side that morning. The fruit stand owner, who is from Bangladesh, revealed that the banana was priced at 35 cents. This means the auction price was 14.85 million times the banana's actual value.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's conceptual art piece "Comedian" aims to explore the value of art, the nature of consumerism, and the absurdity of the art market through an ordinary banana, satirizing market speculation. Before the auction, the BAN Meme coin launched by Sotheby's vice president also successfully generated buzz for this auction event in the crypto circle, with BAN's market cap reaching as high as 378 million USD. It was this Meme coin that caught Sun Yuchen's attention for the banana auction.
Related: 《After Buying the Most Expensive Banana and Gaining Global Attention, We Talked to Sun Yuchen》
HBO Documentary Aims to Reveal Satoshi Nakamoto's True Identity, Related Individuals Deny Involvement
No one wants to be Satoshi Nakamoto, as this identity is too dangerous.
In October, HBO announced that its upcoming documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery" would reveal the true identity of Bitcoin's anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The film is directed by Emmy-nominated Cullen Hoback, known for "Q: Into the Storm."
Several well-known individuals closely associated with Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry, including Craig Wright (who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto) and Hal Finney (an early Bitcoin developer), have publicly denied any connection to the HBO documentary.
Craig Wright, despite publicly claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto since 2016, has not gained widespread acceptance for his claims over the past few years. He recently stated on social media: "There is still no conclusive evidence regarding Satoshi Nakamoto's identity. Anyone claiming to know the truth is merely speculating." This statement sparked intense discussions on social media.
On the other hand, the family of the late Hal Finney has also publicly stated that they did not participate in the making of this documentary and do not wish to associate Finney's name with any unverified theories or speculations. They emphasized that Hal Finney's contributions are more reflected in the development and promotion of Bitcoin technology rather than in debates about Satoshi Nakamoto's identity.
TON Ecosystem Mini Game Hamster Kombat Draws Attention from Iranian Military and Official Opposition
This year, the trend of click-to-earn mini games has swept across the globe. On the streets of Iran, in subway stations, taxis, and buses, you can see people tirelessly clicking on their phone screens. Most of these seemingly leisurely Iranians are users of Hamster Kombat.
According to local media reports on June 24, Iranian government officials and hardliners strongly oppose the blockchain game "Hamster Kombat," claiming it is a tool of Western soft power aimed at distracting the public from the upcoming presidential elections. Amid the deteriorating Iranian economy and rising inflation, millions of Iranians view Web3 games as a way to make money. Hamster Kombat is a click game on Telegram where users earn points by performing repetitive tasks and potentially receive airdrops.
Hossein Delirian, spokesperson for the Iranian National Cyber Space Center, stated that using games for cryptocurrency mining has become a breeding ground for hacker crimes, and those participating in these games should be cautious about protecting their information and accounts. This controversy has also drawn attention from the religious community, with prominent Shia scholar Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi describing cryptocurrencies as "the root of many ills" and urging people to avoid playing games like Hamster Kombat that involve Bitcoin.
Special Note
In fact, many funny and interesting events in the crypto space this year have occurred in the Meme circle, such as:
《[++When++ Meme Coins Encounter Social Hotspots: LUIGI Performs "Crypto Version of Robin Hood" Plot](当 Meme 币遇到社会热点：LUIGI 上演\“加密版罗宾汉\”剧情)》
《How Did a Kid Who Live-Streamed Issuing Coins Go from Scammer to New Internet Celebrity?》
《++Meme++ Perspective Awards: About How I Issued a Meme Coin with a Refrigerator…》
Memecoins, as a typical "attention economy," have developed the combination of the crypto world and performance art to the extreme, with people finding themes, angles, and narratives, provoking people's nerves in absurd, bizarre, and even vulgar ways. However, I personally do not believe this has any direct relationship with crypto; they merely don the guise of issuing coins. Therefore, these interesting moments are not specifically considered part of the "crypto world" in this article, but I still believe they are an important part of Crypto culture.
